The Land of Shu: Where Tang Poetry Rose and Fell

During the Tang Dynasty, the land of Shu was composed of the Ba and Shu areas, which were adjacent to present-day Hanzhong city of Shaanxi province to the north, northern Yunnan province to the south, Wushan county of Chongqing to the east, and Xichang city of Sichuan province to the west. In the nearly 300 years of rule under the dynasty, a number of poets, whether they were born or just worked and lived there for a short period of time, wrote many immortal poems, which constitute an integral part of Tang poetry. They range from Chen Zi’ang and Wang Bo of the early Tang to Li Shangyin, Wen Tingyun, and Wei Zhuang of the late Tang. The land of Shu is, therefore, the witness of the rise and fall of Tang poetry